“All right, Tom,” Molly said. “Do you mind going out the back way?”
He was surprised for a moment, until he saw another knot of people approaching to say goodbye. He nodded, then, saying, “Quite right. Might as well preserve the amenities.”
“Story of our marriage, isn’t it?” remarked Molly.
In the meanwhile, as the newly-married couple, the other guests, and even the bride’s stepfather departed, Ivy Waterhouse lay resting on the specially prepared couch in the library. She looked out on to the piece of grass beyond the kitchen, watching the odd guests drift to and fro. Evelyn Endell brought her some tea and bread and butter, saying, “They’re all going now. Why don’t I take your shoes off?” As she did so she asked, “Shall I stay while you have your tea? Or are you too tired for company?”
“Can I tell you something?” Ivy asked. “I want you to tell me what Molly will think.”
“Of course,” Evelyn said, drawing a chair close to the couch so that she could hear Ivy’s weary voice. To give her a little time she said, “It’s been a lovely day. And so nice to see that Josephine’s grown into such a lovely woman. And Fred – oh, isn’t he lovely? So handsome – whoever would have thought he would be like that?”
Ivy drank some tea. Her eyes rested on the round and sensible face of Joe Endell’s mother. “It was Isabel said I should tell you,” she remarked.
Evelyn looked at her. “Are you sure,” she asked, “that you should be talking and not just resting?”
“I’m weak, Evelyn,” Ivy pointed out, “but I’m not rambling. I’m in my right mind.”
The sun was low outside the window. Ivy said, “It’s so nice here – the sun behind those trees far away. Just coming into bud.” Then she said, “This concerns you in a way, Evelyn, with Molly being Fred’s mother. You see,” and she paused, “it’s a hard thing to say because I’ve kept it locked up so long. She’s not my daughter – Molly. She’s sort of adopted.”
“What are you saying!” cried Evelyn. “Where did she come from?” Ivy, still looking out into the trees, said, “I’ll tell you.”
Fragments of the day continued. Sid Waterhouse and Fred Endell were gratefully drinking glasses of foaming beer in the kitchen while their grandson ate scrambled eggs at the kitchen table. Molly and Simon Tate were eating plates of chicken in the dining room while George Messiter, who had no head for strong drink, lay on the settle under the window with his eyes closed. On the lawn men were packing up the marquee. And Molly, with her feet on a chair, said, “It’s better if Tom goes. It’s been a dog’s life here for him.” Richard Mayhew came in and said, “I’d advise you to count the undrunk bottles of champagne. They’re hauling the stuff out at great speed.” And Sam Needham came in, saying, “It’s on the news – the police have picked up Norman and Arnie Rose.”
But in the library Evelyn Endell was staring in horror at her friend Ivy.
Molly was never told about the conversation between the two women. She was very busy, from then on, with the production of the Messiter. She was, moreover, in love with Richard Mayhew. And perhaps the main reason why she heard nothing about what had taken place in the library on Josephine’s wedding day, was that from then on everything was overshadowed by the fact of her mother’s approaching death.
Ivy no longer lived in the neat little house in Beckenham. Her home was now one room at a hospice which stood in wooded grounds a few miles away. The room, at an angle in the building, had windows on two sides which looked out into trees, now shedding their leaves. Ivy, very thin now, was afflicted, not by pain but by the incessant struggle of a body being fought down into death by an internal enemy. She was a country in civil war, where heroic last-ditch battles were staving off inevitable defeat. There were times when they all, even Sid, wished that she could die peacefully without the battles her own body was putting up and the reinforcements of trying medical treatment. But they recognized that as long as Ivy needed to maintain the fiction, which she did not herself really believe, that she was in hospital receiving treatment and not in a clinic, waiting to die, all these routines must go on.
Molly was sitting by her mother as she slept one afternoon, sadly remembering the old energetic set of the heavily-lipsticked lips, the heap of bleached hair and the often-terrifying vigour she had injected into her life when she was younger. And it was as she recalled the vicious tongue, the sharp blows about the head, the sudden, erratic kindnesses of hard-pressed Ivy in her slum, that her mother opened her faded eyes and said quietly, “Mary – I’m very ill.”
“I know, Mum,” Molly said, looking down at the gaunt face, which seemed to have no flesh on it. Ivy’s eyes roamed the ceiling, then turned on her daughter. “Is Sid here?” she asked.
“He’ll be here in a little while,” she said. “Half an hour.”
“He said I ought to tell you,” she said. “Or he would himself. He wanted to – years ago – but I wouldn’t let him. I’d been keeping it a secret so long –”
“Never mind, Mum,” Molly said, wondering if perhaps the drugs her mother was being given were affecting her brain. “Never mind –”
A nurse put her head round the door. “Bedsores,” she said boldly, willing Molly out of the room.
“Not now,” Ivy said faintly.
“Five minutes,” said the nurse, setting her pan on the bedside table.
“I’ll come back, Mum,” Molly said. Her mother’s eyes followed her to the door.
Downstairs she rather guiltily got out her calculator and started doing some figures. She did not need the calculator for the sums were engraved on her brain. She had to expand again and she had to do it more legitimately this time. She must have a proper factory on the Atlantic coast. There were orders, now, from the USA. As they produced more Messiters the repairs, spare part business and distribution grew more complicated. They were outgrowing the premises in London and Framlingham. And she knew it would be impossible to stand still – they must either grow, or fade. And she had over five hundred people working for her now. She had found a factory, near Liverpool, and because it had gone out in a recent shower of bankruptcies the price was not high. But, again, she would have to pledge everything, borrow everything she possibly could, to start up. Would there be housing for the workers, if they decided to move with the business? Could they make enough in the first year even to cover the interest payments? And enough in the second to bite into the loan? And enough in the third and fourth to see the business profitable? And even if they could, was the venture worthwhile? Sometimes she thought she would rather leave things as they were or just persuade the other major shareholders – George, Wayne, her sister, Tom and Isabel Allaun – to sell up, take their money and run. The now-familiar figures jolted in front of her eyes. In the end, she thought, it was not an exclusively financial decision she was making – it was personal. The others wanted her to go ahead. Shirley was cautiously optimistic. But she alone had to decide whether she was prepared for further struggle.
She stood up and went back to Ivy. Slowly taking the stairs she thought, “And then there’s the dress shops down in Covent Garden – the little brass and clockshop –” “If you hadn’t this to do you’d be taking in stray kittens,” Tom Allaun had said to her sourly while they were having coffee in a coffee shop in the West End after their visit to the lawyer. He was talking about the clockshop with the little brass foundry at the back, where she had installed an apprentice to the proprietor, who was an old man. “Oh,” she said, “it looks stupid now. This ramshackle collection of businesses – outworkers, old clockmenders. But look at the alternatives – great big companies with top-heavy managements, shareholders, union interventions – they’re like dinosaurs most of them. They eat too much, their brains are too small and they won’t survive the hard times. I’m flexible – maybe that’ll save us in the end. You don’t have to worry, Tom. You’re a lawyer and crime’s one thing we won’t be short of in the years to come.”
Tom nodded. He and Molly were getting a divorce. He
was living with his lover in a small flat in Lambeth. He was applying himself to the new job he had obtained. The couple had a large Airedale dog called Mr Brown – sometimes Molly envied them their happiness and quietude. Her own life sometimes seemed like a badly-tied parcel going through the post with a label on it bearing an address no one could quite make out. She asked Tom, “Is it all right if I go on using the name after the divorce? It’s good for the export trade. The Americans love a lord.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” he said. He glanced at his watch, “I’d better be getting back.” He looked at her and said uneasily, “You’re looking well. I hope you’re happy.”
“I’m happy,” she said. “I can tell you are.”
They parted, he to go back to work and she to go down to Framlingham.
She remembered this as she mounted the polished stairs to the room on the first floor where her mother lay. She and Tom might have separated to go on different journeys, she thought, but there would be no more for Ivy, except the one which took her out of the world. Her mother lay flat in bed with her eyes closed. The nurse’s five minutes would have tired her. As Molly sat down she asked, “Mary? Is Sid here yet?”
“No, Mum,” she said. “He’ll be along in about fifteen minutes.”
“I thought it was nearly time,” Ivy said, in her weak voice.
There was something in her face which alarmed Molly. She said, “I’ll ring up just to make sure he’s on his way.”
“Don’t disturb him,” she said faintly.
Molly went to telephone Sid. She said, “Haven’t you left? Mum wants you.”
“I was on my way out,” he said. And immediately asked, “Is she worse?”
“I don’t know – she keeps asking for you,” Molly told him.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
Molly went back to Ivy’s room and sat down. “Sid’s on his way,” she said.
Ivy sighed. “On his way,” she muttered. Then she said, “That thing I wanted to tell you –”
Molly said, “Yes.”
“Prop me up,” Ivy asked. The tired voice was urgent.
Molly very carefully drew her frail body up the bed. She could feel Ivy’s sharp elbows and shoulder blades. She was secretly afraid that she might break one of her bones. Finally Ivy was propped up against two pillows, resting against a frame at the top of the bed. She shook her head in bewilderment at her own frailty. She turned her head towards Molly and said, “I’ll say it straight out. You’re not my daughter.”
“Mum?” said Molly. She stared at the wasted face. It must be a delusion brought on by the drugs she was being given, she thought. But what a horrible fantasy. She felt hurt that now, at the last moment, Ivy’s brain had produced a dream, a nightmare, in which she rejected her.
Ivy nodded her head slightly from the pillow. “You think I’m losing my mind,” she said. “But it’s true.”
Molly, not knowing what to think, drew a deep breath and answered, “If it is true it doesn’t matter. You’ve been my mother – a good mother. That’s what really matters.”
“I hope so,” Ivy said. “I’ve tried. But sometimes, with what’s happened to you, I thought you could have had a better life somewhere else.”
“I’m all right. I’m fine,” said Molly in bewilderment. At that moment it did not really seem to matter whether Ivy had adopted her or not. The present was too important. Every moment took Ivy closer towards a mystery – Molly felt it now, hovering about her. She knew Sid had felt it, and Shirley. There was little room, here, for the past or the future. Time had stopped. She said, “Don’t worry, Mum. I’m content with everything. Tell me what you like but don’t tire yourself. Mothers are the people who bring you up – you were Josie’s mother too, most of the time. You took her in when I was fit for nothing. You saved her.”
“She’s a lovely girl,” Ivy said.
“Thanks to you,” her daughter said.
“I don’t think you believe me, Mary,” her mother said, and it may have been the way in which she persistently called her by her old name, the name she had had as a child, which made Molly wonder if what she said was true. Ivy said, “Tom Totteridge found you in a bombed building and on the way down the street Sid met him. He had you on the cart. He just took you up in his arms and handed you down, a little girl, with golden curls, all filthy from the fire. There wasn’t anybody about.”
Molly gazed at her mother in horror. “Sid brought you home to me. I’d lost my baby, on account of the bombing. A bomb landed nearby and blew me over. I got up and started to come home but I fell down in the street – a man had to carry me to hospital. The roads were all blocked. And then I nearly died and after that I think I went a bit mad. I kept on hitting Jackie, poor little mite, and in the end they had to take him away from me. He stayed with my sister. I wanted a girl, see, and this baby would have been a girl. I was beside myself. I didn’t know what I was doing. And they didn’t have these drugs in those days. They couldn’t do anything for you. Old Tom knew how I was. He found me in the street one day, crying, and brought me home. He saw Sid, that early morning when there was nobody about – I suppose he thought it’d help.” She paused, “After that I was all right. At first I thought you was mine, the little girl I wanted. Then I came round and I knew you weren’t.” She was staring forward now, talking as if to herself. “But no one came forward to claim the other one. So I kept you.”
Molly’s head spun. The other one. Oh, God – the other one, she thought. And remembered what Peggy Jones had said in the Kilburn pub. “It was the girl who’d been screaming and crying… he was lying on top of her but her face was free … the bed on fire and their dead mother lying on it … he asked the boy who he was but he couldn’t speak.” She murmured Peggy’s words, “Let’s hope they never knew how bad it was.” Ivy, very tired, asked, “Who?”
“The children,” Molly answered, scarcely knowing what she was saying. She knew she must respond to her mother’s story without telling her the whole truth. How could Ivy ever forgive herself for what happened later? And yet she could not think what to say, how to act. Ivy had told her the secret she had kept for so many years – now she must keep the secret beyond the secret. The atmosphere in the room was heavy now, full of death. Molly herself struggled to get some air into her own lungs. Finally she said, quietly, “Thanks for telling me, Mum. But, like I say, I’m still your child. The past is still the same –” and then, trying not to cry, she said, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. What difference does it make?” And added, “You saved me from the orphanage – it was the same as the way you saved Josie –”
She knew she was tiring Ivy, who lay leaning against the pillows, after her confession, as if she were completely exhausted, her eyes open and unblinking. Molly felt the contrast between her own human vitality and her mother’s body, from which the spark of life had almost gone. And Ivy lay back, drugged and dying, seeing Lil Messiter walking up Meakin Street towards her. It was a sunny day and Lil was wearing a cotton dress with flowers on it. “Hullo, Lil,” said Ivy. Molly leaned forward in her chair to catch the mumbled words but she could hear nothing. Lil smiled at Ivy. “Hullo, Lil,” she said again.
The door opened. Molly turned at the sound and put her finger to her lips. Then she shook her head, sadly. And she mouthed at him, “She told me – about you getting me off Tom Totteridge’s cart.” She smiled. “Nice bargain off a rag-and-bone man. Tell her when she wakes up – it doesn’t matter.” She stood up and kissed him and left the room quietly. But Sid was behind her in the corridor, “I told her,” he said. “Told her time and again you should know. She was like a madwoman on the subject – a madwoman, I’m telling you. Like she was with the Flanders’ when Jim died. That was when it all came back to her – You should have known before.”
“Doesn’t make any difference, does it, Dad?” Molly said. “Children are who you bring up, that’s right, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter where you get them from – it’s who you bring up.�
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He nodded at her and said, “I’d better get back inside.”
Molly walked swiftly down the corridor. She saw the nurse who had attended to her mother earlier.
Molly said, “She’s looking very weak. Can you tell me anything?”
“She’s happy,” said the nurse. “That’s the chief thing.”
Molly asked her directly, “How long will it be?”
“You can never tell,” said the nurse in her professional voice. “The main thing is that she’s happy and comfortable –” But there must have been something in Molly’s expression which commanded a less brisk approach. She broke off and said, “Not long now.”
“Is it days?” asked Molly.
She hesitated. “I don’t think it will be days,” she told her.
“Thanks,” Molly said.
She met her brother Jack coming through the swing doors into the reception area. He looked at her in fear as if she might be bringing the news of Ivy’s death.
“Hullo, Jack,” she said. “I thought you weren’t coming till tomorrow.”
“I had an impulse,” he said. “I came straight on from a meeting. How is she?”
“Pretty bad,” Molly told him. “I talked to the nurse – she said it would be soon. Not even a few days, she said.”
Jack sighed. “I must have known it,” he said. “Are you going to ring Shirley?”
“No point yet,” said his sister. “Do you want to come and have a cup of tea? Sid’s up there and she’s half asleep.”
They sat in two chairs and drank their cups of tea. Jack looked hopeless. Molly said, “She’s in no pain.”
“Going though, isn’t she?” Jack said. He burst out, “What did she do to us? We’re a restless lot, aren’t we? You’ve been married too many times and now you’re making bikes. I’m in the House of Commons waiting for the revolution – even Shirl’s married to a Chinese, now, and she was the quiet one. Why aren’t we living quietly in nice semis with steady jobs?”
“Well,” said Molly. “It’s partly Ivy but it’s partly that we were the revolution – we were post-war kids. We had all this free orange juice and opportunities. Not that Ivy didn’t stir us up – it must have been all that yelling and screaming.”
All The Days of My Life Page 66